The Poems of Madison Cawein. Volume 2 (of 5)

XIII

 
“So was my love confessed to you. I thought
You loved me as love led me to believe:
And so, no matter where I, dreaming, went
Among the hills, the woods, and quiet fields,
All had a poetry so intimate,
So happy and so ready that, for me,
’Twas but to stoop and gather as I went,
As one goes reaching roses in the June.
Three withered wild ones that I gathered then
I send you now. Their scent and bloom are dust:
 

1

 
What wild-flower shows perfection
Such as thy face, no blemish mars?
I leave to the selection
Of all the wild-flower stars:
To every wildwood bloom that blows,
Wild phlox, wild daisy, and wild rose.
 
 
What cascade hath suspicion
O’ the marvel that thy whiteness is?
I leave to the decision
Of each proclaiming breeze:
To winds that kiss the buds awake,
And roll the ripple on the lake.
 
 
What bird can sing the naming
Of all the music that thou art?
I leave to the proclaiming
Of that within my heart:
My heart, wherein, the whole day long,
Sits adoration rapt in song.
 

2

 
What witch then hast thou met,
Who wrought this amulet?
This charm, that makes each look, love,
Of thine a rose;
Thy face an open book, love,
Where beauty gleams and glows,
And thought to music set.
 
 
What fairy of the wood,
To whom thou once wast good,
Gave thee this gift?—Thy words, love,
Should be pure gold;
And all thy songs as bird’s, love,
Sweet as the Mays of old
With youth and love imbued.
 
 
What elfin of the glade
This white enchantment made,
That filled thee with the essence
Of all the Junes?
That made thy soul, thy presence,
Like to the moon’s
Above a far cascade.
 
 
What wizard of the cave
Hath made my heart thy slave?
That dreams of thee when sleeping,
And, when awake,
My anxious spirit keeping
’Neath spells I can not break,
Sweet spells, whence naught can save.
 

3

 
Dear, (though given conclusion to),
Songs,—no memory surrenders,—
Still their music breathe in you;
Silence meditation renders
Audible with notes it knew.
 
 
Sweet, when all the flowers are dead,
Perfumes,—that the heart remembers
Made of them a marriage-bed,—
Shall not fail me in December’s
Gloom, but from your face be shed.
 
 
Dear, when night denies a star,
Darkness will not suffer, seeing
Song and fragrance are not far;
Starlight of the summer being
In the loveliness you are.
 

XIV

 
“Revealing distant vistas where I thought
I saw your love stand as ’mid lily blooms,
Long, angel goblets molded out of stars,
Pouring aroma at your feet: and life
Took fire with thoughts your soul must help you read:
 
 
A song; and songs (who does not know?)
Reveal no music but is thine.
Thou singest, and the waters flow,
The breezes blow,
The sunbeams shine,
And all the earth grows young, divine.
 
 
Low laughter; and I look away;
Whate’er the time of year, I dream
I walk beneath sweet skies of May
On ways where play
Both gloom and gleam,
And hear a bird and forest stream.
 
 
A thought; and straight it seems to me,
However dark, the stars arise,
And rain down memories of thee,—
As, it may be,
From Paradise
One feels an angel-lover’s eyes.
 

XV

 
“But is it well to tell you what I felt
When I beheld no change beyond the moods
That gloomed or glistened in your raven eyes?
When I sat singing ’neath one steadfast star
Of morning with no phantoms of strange fears
To slay the look or word that helped me sing:
When song came easier than come buds in spring,
That make the barren boughs one pomp of pearls:
 
 
Oh, let the happy day go past,
And let the night be short or long,
When life and love are one at last,
And hearts are full of song,
’Tis sweet midsummer of the dream,
And all the dreams thou hast
Are truer than they seem.
 
 
And once I dreamt in autumn of
Death with cadaverous eyes that gazed
From out a shadow.... It was love
Whose deathless eyes were raised
From the deep darkness that unrolled
Wild splendor; and, amazed,
Thy soul I did behold.
 
 
And then it seemed that some one said,
The dead are nearer than dost know.
And when they tell thee love is dead,—
Although it seems ’t is so,—
Still shalt thou feel in every beat
And heart-throb of thy woe
Love breathing, bitter-sweet.
 

XVI

 
“One evening when I came to talk with you,
Impatience hurt me in your brief replies.
And I who had refused,—because we dread
Approaching horror of our lives made maimed,—
The inevitable, could not help but see
Some change in you to’ards me.—That night I dreamed
I wandered ’mid old ruins, where the snake
And scorpion crawled in poison-spotted heat;
Plague-bloated bulks of hideous vine and root
Wrapped fallen fanes; and bristling cacti bloomed
Blood-red and death-white on forgotten tombs.
And from my soul went forth a bitter cry
That pierced the silence that was packed with death
And pale presentiment. And so I went,
A white flame beckoning before my face,
And in my ears sounds of primordial seas
That boasted preadamic gods and men:
A flame before me and, beyond, a voice:
But, lo, the white flame when I reached for it
Became thin ashes like a dead man’s dust;
And when I thought I should behold the sea,
Stagnation, turned to filth and rottenness,
Rolled out a swamp: the voice became a stench.
 
 
If we should pray together now
For sunshine and for rain,
And thou shouldst get fair weather now,
And I the clouds again,
Would ray and rain keep single,
Or for the rainbow mingle?
 
 
Dear, if this should be made to me,
That I had asked for light,
And God had given shade to me,
And all to thee that’s bright,
Wouldst thou go by with scorning,
Refusing darkness morning?
 
 
If all my life were winter, love,
And all thy life were spring,
And mine with frost should splinter, love,
While thine with birds should sing,
Wouldst thou walk past and glitter,
Forgetful mine is bitter?
 

XVII

 
“Still on the anguish of a dying hope
An infant hope was nourished; all in vain.
For, at the last, although we parted friends,
The friendship lay like sickness on my soul,
That saw all gladness perish from the world
With loss of thee; and, ’mid the future years,
Love building high a sepulchre for hope.
 
 
Ah, could you learn forgetfulness,
And teach my heart how to forget;
And I unlearn all fretfulness,
And teach your soul that still will fret;
The mornings of the world would burn
Before us and we would not turn,
For we would not regret.
 
 
Did you but know what sorrow keeps,
That drives the joy of life away,
And I what each to-morrow keeps
For us until it is to-day;
No grief or change would then surprise
Our lives with what our lives were wise,
And nothing could betray.
 
 
If you could be interior to
My dreams that are all love’s desire;
And I could be superior to
Myself and such in you inspire;
Long stairways would the years unroll
To lift us upward, soul to soul,
To what celestial fire!
 

XVIII

 
“There came no words of comfort from your lips.
Not that I asked for pity! that had been
As fire unto the scalded or dry bread
Unto the famished fallen ’mid the sands!
But all your actions said that I was wrong,
But how, I know not and have ceased to care;
Still standing like one stricken blind at noon,
Who gropes and fumbles, feeling all grow strange
That once was so familiar; cursing God
Who locks him in with darkness and despair.—
Your judgment had been juster had it had
A lesser love than mine to judge.—O love,
Where lay the justice of thy judge in this?—
 
 
‘If thou hadst praised thy God as long
As thou hast praised a woman’s eyes,
Perhaps thou hadst not suffered wrong,
As now, and sat with sighs:
But, through thy prayer and praise made strong,
Perhaps thou hadst grown wise.
 
 
‘If thou hadst bade thy God be more
Than I, thy life had not been sad;
His love to thee had not been poor
As mine. But thou wast mad,
And cam’st, a beggar, to my door,
And had more than I had.
 
 
‘If thou hadst taught me how to love,
Nor played with love as monarchs play,
My heart had learned right soon enough,
From thine, love’s lowlier way.
But all thy love stood far above,
Nor touched my soul to sway.’
 

XIX

 
“Thus did you write me, or in words like these,
When all was over and your heart was led,
Through pity, haply, thus to justify
Yourself, that needed not to justify,
Since all your reason lay in four small words,
Enough to wreck my world and all my life,
You did not love: what more is there to tell?—
Yet, haply, it was this: One soul, that still
Demanded more than it could well return;
And, searching inward, yet could never pierce
Beyond its superficiality.
You did not know; yet I had felt in me
The rich fulfillment of a rare accord,
And could not, though the longing lay like song
And music on me, win your soul’s response.
 
 
Were it well, lifting me
Eyes that give heed,
Down in your soul to see
Thought, the affinity
Of act and deed?
Knowing what naught may tell
Of heart and soul:
Yet were the knowledge whole,
And were it well?
 
 
Were it well, giving true
Love all enough,
Still to discover new
Depths of true love for you,
Infinite love?
Feeling what naught may tell
Of heart and soul:
Yet were the knowledge whole,
And were it well?
 

XX

 
“What else but, laboring for some good, to lift
Ourselves above the despotism of self,
All egoism strangling strength and hope,
To work and work, and, in the love of work,
Which takes the place, in some, of love’s real self,
To quench the flame that eats into the heart?
Art, our intensest and our truest love,
Immaculateness that has never led
One of her lovers wrong, his love all soul!
I followed beauty, and my ardor prayed
Your memory would, feature and form and face,
Be blotted out within me; rise no more
To mar the labor that I owed to Art.
I prayed, yea, to forget you, you I loved:
I prayed; and, see!—how Heaven answered me:
 
 
I have no song to tell thee
The love that I would sing;
The song that should enspell thee
With words, and so compel thee
That thou, with love, must wing
Into my life to-morrow—
For all my songs are sorrow.
 
 
My strength is not a giant
To hold thee with strong hands,
To make thee less defiant;
Thy spirit more compliant
With all my love demands:
Alas! my love is meekness,
And all my strength is weakness.
 
 
What hope have I to hover—
When wings refuse to rise—
Within thy heart’s close cover,
And there to play the lover,
Concealed from mortal eyes?
What hope! to give me boldness,
When all thy looks are coldness?
 

XXI

 
“I prayed; and for a time felt strong as strength,
And held both hands out to the loveliness
That lured in the ideal. And I felt
Compelling power upon me that would lift
My face to heaven, now, to see the stars,
Now bend it back to earth to see the flowers.
I learned long lessons ’twixt a look and look:
 
 
Breezes and linden blooms,
Sunshine and showers;
Rain, that the May perfumes,
Cupped in the flowers:
Clouds and the leaves that patter
Raindrops that glint and glare—
Or be they gems that scatter?
Sapphires the sylphides shake,
When their loose fillets break,
Out of their radiant hair?
 
 
Now is my heart a lute!
Now doth it pinion
Song in love’s swift pursuit
In thought’s dominion!
Dreaming of all thou meanest,
Thou, with uneager eyes,
Nature! of worlds thou queenest,
Whither thy mother hand
Draws us from land to land,
Far from the worldly wise!
 

XXII

 
“Thus would I scatter grain around my life,
Gold grain of song, to lure them down to me,
Cloud-colored doves of peace to fill my soul,
And find them turn to ravens while they flew,
Black ravens of despair that would not out.
The old, dull, helpless aching at the heart,
As if some scar had turned a wound again.
While idle grief stared at the brutal past,
Which held a loss that made the past more rich
Than all Earth’s arts: that marveled how it came
Such puny folly should usurp love’s high
Proud pedestal of life that held your form,
In Parian, sculptured by the hands of thought.
And oft I shook myself,—for nightmares weighed
Each sense,—and seemed to wake; yet evermore
Beheld a death’s-head grinning at my eyes.
 
 
So when the opening of the door doth thrill
My soul with sudden knowledge death is come,
Let me forget you or remember still,
It will not matter then that life went ill,
When death bends to me and my lips are dumb.
 
 
Then I shall not remember: and shall leave
No memory behind me, and no trace
Of aught my life accomplished. Let none grieve.
There is no heart my passing will bereave;
And there are thousands who can fill my place.
 
 
Who knocks?—The night camps on each hill and heath:
And round my door are minions of the night:
And like a weapon, riven from its sheath,
The wind sweeps, and the tempest grinds its teeth
Around me and my wild, hand-hollowed light.
 
 
Who knocks?—the door is open!—And I see
The Darkness threatening, with distorted fists
Of cloudy terror, Courage on her knee:
Shine far, O candle! for it so may be
Love is bewildered in the night and mists.—
 
 
No wandering wisp art thou, that haunts the rain
With pallid flicker, fading as it flies!—
The door is open!—Will he knock again?—
The door is open!—Shall it be in vain?—
Come in! delay not! thou, whose ways are wise!
 
 
Who knocked has entered: let the darkness pass,
The door be closed!—Now morning lights shall thrust
It open; and the sunlight shine and mass
Its splendor here where once but darkness was,
And in its rays—motes and a little dust.”
 

XXIII

 
And I had read, read to the bitter end;
Half hearing lone surmises of the rain
And trouble of the wind. At last I rose
And went to Gwendolyn. She did not know
The kiss I gave her had a shudder in it;
Nor how the form of Julien rose between
Me and her lips, a blood-stain o’er his heart.
 

THE IDYLL OF THE STANDING-STONE

I

 
She knows its windings and its crooks;
The wildflowers of its lovely woods;
The crowfoot’s golden sisterhoods,
That crowd its sunny nooks:
The iris, whose blue blossoms seem
Mab’s bonnets; and, each leaf a-gleam,
The trillium’s fairy-books.
 
 
He knows its shallows and its pools,
Its stair-like beds of rock that go,
Foaming, with waterfall and flow,
Where dart the minnow schools;
Its grassy banks that herons haunt,
Or where the woodcock call; and gaunt
The mushrooms lift their stools.
 
 
She seeks the columbine and phlox,
The bluebell, where the bushes fill
The old stones of the ruined mill;
She wades among the rocks:
Her feet are rose-pearl in the stream;
Her eyes are bluet-blue; a beam
Lies on her nut-brown locks.
 
 
He comes with fishing-reel and line
To angle in the darker deeps,
Where the reflected forest sleeps
Of sycamore and pine:
And now and then a shadow swoops
Above him of a hawk that stoops
From skies as clear as wine.
 
 
And will he see, if they should meet,
That she is fairer than each flower
Her apron fills? and in that hour
Feel life less incomplete?…
He stops below: she walks above—
The brook floats down, as white as love,
One blossom to his feet.
 
 
And she?—should she behold the tan
Of manly face and honest eyes,
Would all her soul idealize
Him? make him more than man?…
She dropped one blossom when she heard
Soft whistling—was it man or bird,
Whose notes so sweetly ran?
Where the woodcock call
 

The Idyll of the Standing-Stone

 

 
They knew before they came to meet;
For some divulging influence
Had touched them thro’ the starry lens
God holds to bring in beat
Two hearts—her heart one haunting wish,
And his—forgetful of the fish,
Her flower at his feet.
 

II

 
The sassafras twigs had just lit up
The yellow stars of their fragrant candles,
And the dogwood brimmed each blossom-cup
With spring to its brown-tipped handles;
When down the orchard, ’mid apple blooms—
Say, ho, the hum o’ the honey-bee!—
A glimpse of Spring in the sprinkled glooms?
Or only a girl? with the warm perfumes
Blown round her breezily.
 
 
The maple, as red as the delicate flush
Of an afterglow, was airy crimson;
And the haw-tree, white in the wing-whipped hush,
Gleamed cool as a cloud that the moonlight dims on;
And under the oak, whose branches strung—
Say, heigh, the rap o’ the sapsuckér!—
Gray buds in tassels that sweetly swung,
They stood and listened a bird that sung,
As glad as the heart in her.
 
 
Yellow the bloom of the rattle-weed,
And white the bloom of the plum and cherry;
And red as a stain the red-bud’s brede,
And clover the color of sherry:
And a wren sings there in the orchard drift,—
And, ho! the dew from the web that slips!—
And a thrush sings there in the woodland rift,
Where he to his face her face doth lift,
Her face with the willing lips.
 
 
For a while they sat on the moss and grass,
Where the forest bloomed a great wild garden;—
Then the beam from the hollow—it seemed to pass,
And the ray on the hills to harden,
When she rose to go, and his joy fell flat;—
And, heigh, the wasp i’ the pawpaw bell!—
As she waved her hand—why, it seemed at that
’Twas Spring’s own self he was gazing at,
And the life of his life as well.
 

III

 
The teasel and the horsemint spread
The hillsides, as with sunset sown,
Blooming along the Standing-Stone
That ripples in its rocky bed:
There are no treasuries that hold
Gold yellower than the marigold
That crowds its mouth and head.
 
 
’T is harvest-time: a mower stands
Among the morning wheat and whets
His scythe, and for a space forgets
The labor of the ripening lands;
Then bends, and through the dewy grain
His long scythe hisses, and again
He swings it in his hands.
 
 
And she beholds him where he mows
On acres whence the water sends
Faint music of reflecting bends
And falls that interblend with flows:
She stands among the old bee-gums,—
Where all the apiary hums,—
Like some sweet bramble-rose.
 
 
She hears him whistling as he leans,
And, reaping, sweeps the ripe wheat by;
She sighs and smiles and knows not why:—
These are but simple country scenes:
He whets his scythe again, and sees
Her smiling near the hives of bees
Beneath the flowering beans.
 
 
The peacock-purple lizard creeps
Along the rail; and deep the drone
Of insects makes the country lone
With summer where the water sleeps:
She hears him singing as he swings
His scythe; he thinks of other things—
Not toil, and, singing, reaps.
 

IV

 
Into the woods they went again,
Over the wind-blown oats;
Out of the acres of golden grain,
In where the light was a violet stain,
In where the lilies’ throats
Were brimmed with the summer rain.
 
 
Hung on a bough a reaper’s hook,
Over the wind-blown oats;
A girl’s glad laugh and a girl’s glad look,
And the hush and ripple of tree and brook,
And a wild bird’s silvery notes,
And a kiss that a strong man took.
 
 
Out of the woods the lovers went,
Over the wind-waved wheat;
She with a face, where love was blent,
Like to an open testament;
He, from his head to feet,
Dazed with his hope that was eloquent.
 
 
Here how oft had they come to tryst,
Over the wind-waved wheat!
Here how oft had they laughed and kissed!
Talked and tarried where no one wist,
Here where the woods are sweet,
Dim and deep as a dewy mist.
 

V

 
Her pearls are blossoms-of-the-vale,
Her only diamonds are the dews;
Such jewels never can grow stale,
Nor any value lose.
 
 
Among the millet beards she stands:
The languid wind lolls everywhere:
There are wild roses in her hands,
One wild rose in her hair.
 
 
To-morrow, where the shade is warm,
Among the unmown wheat she’ll stop,
And from one daisy-loaded arm
One ox-eyed daisy drop.
 
 
She’ll meet his brown eyes, true and brave,
With blue eyes, false yet dreamy sweet:
He is her lover and her slave,
Who mows among the wheat.
 

 
When buds broke on the apple trees
She wore an apple-blossom dress,
And laughed with him across the leas,
And love was all a guess.
 
 
When goose-plums ripened in the rain,
Plum-colored was her gown of red;
He kissed her in the creek-road lane—
She was his life, he said.
 
 
When apples thumped the droughty land,
A russet color was her gown:
Another came, and—won her hand?—
Nay! carried off to town....
 
 
When grapes hung purple in the hot,
None missed her and her simple dress,
Save one, whom, haply, she forgot,
Who loved her none the less.
 
 
When snow made white each harvest sheaf,
He sought her out amid her show;
Her rubies, redder than the leaf
That autumn forests sow.
 
 
Not one regret her shame reveals;
She smiles at him, then puts him by;
He pleads; and she? she merely steels
Her heart and—lives her lie.
 

VI

 
And he returned when poppies strewed
Their golden blots o’er moss and leaf,—
Blond little Esaus of the wood,
So fair of face, of life so brief.—
Did he forget?—Not he, in truth!—
“No month,” he thought, “holds so much grace,
No month of spring, such grace and youth,
As the sweet April of her face.”
 
 
In fall the frail gerardia
Hung hints of sunset and of dawn
On root and rock, as if to draw
Her lips, remind him of one gone:—
Of one unworthy, in pursuit
Of butterflies, who does not dream
A flower, broken by her foot,
Sweeps, helpless, with her down the stream.
 

SOME SUMMER DAYS

I

 
If you had seen her waiting there
Among the tiger-lily blooms,—
That sowed their jewels everywhere
Among the woodland gleams and glooms,—
You had confessed her very fair,
And sweeter than the wood’s perfumes.
 
 
A country girl with bare brown feet,
She waits, while day slopes down the deeps:
The afternoon is dead with heat,
And all the weary shadow sleeps
Like toil, arm-pillowed in the wheat,
Beside the scythe with which he reaps.
 
 
There is no sound more distant than
The cow-bell on the vine-hung hill;
No nearer than the locust’s span
Of noise that makes the silence shrill:
And now there comes a sun-browned man
Through tiger-lilies of the rill.
 
 
Long will they talk: till, in the end,
The clear west glows, the east grows pale;
Until the glow and pallor blend
Like moonlight on a shifting sail;
And then he ’ll clasp her; she will bend
Her head, consenting. Day will fail:
 
 
The west will flame, then fade away
Through heavy orange, rose, and red,
And leave the heavens violet gray
Above a gypsy-lily bed:
Then they will go; and he will say
Such words to her as none has said.
 
 
A million stars the night will win
Above them; and one firefly
Pulse like a tangled starbeam in
The cedar dark against the sky:
Then he will lift her dimpled chin
And take the kiss she ’ll not deny.
 
 
And when the moon, like the great book
Of Judgment, golden with the light
Of God, lies open o’er yon nook
Of darkest wood and wildest height,
Together they will cross the brook
And reach the gate and kiss good night.